A vehicle treatment system designed as a vehicle washing system with a conveying device for the transporting of a vehicle to be treated in a transporting direction through the vehicle treatment system is known from DE 20 02 565. There, the conveying device has drag rollers arranged on a continuously circulating conveying chain, of which one roller grasps a vehicle tire of a vehicle side from behind and then drags the vehicle through the vehicle washing system. In order to guide the tires to be dragged into the lane provided for the dragging with the drag roller, guides converging in a V shape are provided in the drive-in area of the conveying device on both sides of the lane in the transporting direction, which form a drive-in aid. If the tire approaches one of these guides, it is forced into the desired lane. In order to damage the tire as little as possible while approaching the guides, the guide elements are designed as elongated guide rollers, whose rotating axes are essentially parallel to the vehicle washing system bottoms and converge in a V shape in the transporting direction. While the tire approaches, the guide rollers also rotate then so that the rubbing movements on the tire and the tire sidewall are reduced. If the tire, however, approaches a guide roller too quickly or at too steep an angle, the tire is squeezed and perhaps damaged. Moreover, due to the forcible guiding with the guide rollers, the area of the tire lying on the bottom is laterally shifted and in this way abraded.
In order to eliminate this problem, known drive-in aids have a base plate or so-called guide plate supported so that it can move transverse to the transporting direction, in addition to the guide rollers arranged in the form of a V and affixed on the bottom. A tire located on the guide plate is thus not shifted on the bottom as it approaches a guide roller, but rather moves together with the guide plane transverse to the transporting direction. The guide plate extends, for the purpose, transverse to the transporting direction into the area of the lane for the tires of the other vehicle side also, or another guide plane is provided there.
Likewise, in this drive-in aid, there is also the problem that when the approach to a guide roller is too rapid or too steep, there may be, as before, a squeezing or damage of the tires. Moreover, the violent impact caused in this way is unpleasant for the vehicle occupants.
Since for reasons of space the drive-in of many vehicle washing systems is not straight but rather curved, the trailing back tire of the vehicle drives into the drive-in area at a diagonal to the lane even with a straight drive-in of the front tire into the desired lane of the conveying device, without approaching an approach roller. Since the vehicle driver cannot see the back tires and with the vehicle steering he cannot have any direct influence on the position of the back tire, the back tire often strikes one or both approach rollers in a relatively violent manner. Thus, there is the danger of tire damage, at least of the back tire. In addition, with an unfavorable position of the back tire, it is forced into the lane by the approach rollers, but is guided so close to a side border of the lane that it is dragged along and damaged on a border guide of the conveying device.
US 2008/0028974 discloses a known drive-in aid in a vehicle washing system described above. There, the drive-in aid has a roller arrangement whose rotating axes run in the transporting direction of the vehicle and are used for the lateral shifting capacity of the vehicle. Nonmovable guide tracks are arranged in the shape of a funnel in the area of this roller arrangement; together, they are used with the roller arrangement to introduce a vehicle tire into the transporting area.
US2006/0219127 A1 discloses a similar solution, in which several, funnel-shaped guide tracks are mounted at different heights in the drive-in area. US2006/0225601 A1 discloses a similar solution, in which the guide tracks are located in the drive-in area not in the shape of a funnel, but rather with a curved shape. Such a construction can also be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 3,832,953. With these solutions also, damage to the tires and rims due to impacts or when they are dragged along as they approach the guide tracks cannot be reliably avoided.